CASPER, Wyo. — The Western Nebraska Community
College men’s basketball team received a triple-double performance of 10
points, 10 rebounds and 10 blocked shots from freshman Youssoupha
Kane, and a solid performance from Cody Johnson with eight points and
nine rebounds; but couldn’t hold off the 12th ranked College of Southern Idaho as the Cougars fell 68-67 at the Region 9/18 Challenge Tournament on Friday night in Casper.
“We’ve come a long ways from last week from our last game against South Plains (Tex.),” WNCC coach Russ Beck said. “Defensively we played a whole heck of a lot better than we have the three previous games, which is encouraging. Offensively, we turned the ball over a little bit more than I would like.”
Beck, who came to WNCC after being an assistant CSI, was instrumental in setting up the Challenge which features two teams from Region IX (WNCC, Casper) and two teams from Region 18 (CSI, Salt Lake Community College).
WNCC (1-3) led the contest early after holding on to a slight 35-34 edge at half. However, CSI kept pace and played stayed stride for stride with the Cougars in the seesaw battle, taking the lead for the first time late in the game.
“CSI didn’t take their first lead until they scored a bucket with 12 seconds left in the game,” Beck said. “We felt like we got fouled on the last two possessions, but the whistle didn’t go our way and obviously they didn’t see anything there.”
Despite coming up short on the final score, Beck praised the progress his team has made over the last four games and believes the tough early schedule will pay off down the stretch. The Cougars have now faced the 2011 NJCAA national champion in CSI, and last week they fell to the 2012 champions, South Plains College in Levelland, Tex. WNCC will face 2009 champion Salt Lake Community College (4-0) today to finish out the tournament.
“By the time the day ends [Saturday], we will have played three out of the last four national champions in the first three weeks of the season,” he said. “I think it’ll pay off in the end as long as we stay dedicated and focused, and try to have a little bit of perspective that we don’t want to be playing our best basketball right now. We want to learn and grow and practice hard. Sometimes that’s hard to do when you play teams that aren’t at your level, but these teams are at our level and in some cases they’re a little bit above us and I think that’s going to put us in a position late – in February or March.”
The Cougars were 14 of 22 from the free throw line for 63 percent compared to CSI, who went 17 of 21 from the stripe. Additoinally, WNCC won the battle on the boards, out-rebounding the Golden Eagles 42-37 in the contest.
Despite the loss, though, Beck believes this team has the potential to do well going forward and said that they just have to iron out a few things offensively before things start really falling into place for the young squad.
“The difference between winning and losing sometimes is just a very, very slight margin,” he said. “I told the guys, ‘I feel like we’re about ready to win a whole bunch of games in a row, we just have a few more things offensively to iron out.’ We’re getting there.”
WNCC (1-3) 35 32 — 67
CSI (5-1) 34 34 — 68
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